Conference Meets September 25th.

The Fredericksburg Writers Conference will convene on Thursday, September 25^th, from 6-8 PM at the Hill Country University Center.  The program will include a guided discussion about point of view and updates by members on their progress.  The feature presentation will be presented by Ken Esten Cooke, Editor and Publisher of the Fredericksburg Standard-Radio Post.  Attendance is open to anyone interested in writing.

Questions may be addressed to Robert Deming, rcdeming@gmail.com.  There is no fee for the event.

Speaking: Fredericksburg's Most Prolific Writer

The next quarterly meeting of the Conference will be 6-8 PM at Hill Country University Center on Thursday, September 25.  Our featured speaker will be Ken Esten Cooke, Editor and Publisher of the Fredericksburg Standard Radio Post.

We will have other discussions as well, including the opportunity to tell about your project and recent successes and challenges.  Plan to come, tell your friends, bring your questions.

Write or Die

 

 

We have at least 6 people interested in a version of Sit Down, Shut Up, and Write.  I'll go over this concept with the FWC Brain Trust and we'll set a meeting, as well as another Open Critique Group.

We are looking at September 18 or 25 for the next Conference meeting.  I am hoping to get Publisher and Editor Ken Esten Cook of the Fredericksburg Standard Radio Post as our speaker.  I messed up the planning for that, we did the Shameless Self Promotion Workshop with Eva Pohler instead, but I forgot to announce that and tell the speaker it wasn't happening.  Eva put everything she told us about promoting our work in an ebook.  If you couldn't make the class, buy the ebook and take notes as you go. 

There is a good blog on writing by a sassy and irreverent Canadian at http://bareknucklewriter.com/  "I like to have the grunt writing work done before noon, pouring out all the novel stuff in a caffeine-fueled rush like a hail of word-bullets."  She recommends downloading http://writeordie.com/ and setting it to kamikaze mode, which deletes words if you don't keep typing.

You might wonder what Fredericksburg Writers Conference is all about.  Here you go:

Support and encourage writers of all kinds by:

- quarterly meetings with interesting speakers.

- building relationships through critique groups and other meetings.

- holding an annual agent and editor conference just like the big guys .

- holding seminars on related skills (as in the recent promotion seminar, in which we net $250 towards that goal).

I believe we are finding a core group of writers to build this program around.  The way it works so far is that Mara Fox Moretti has the ideas, and I know how to make them happen.

Calvin and Hobbes on Creativity

"Our idea of relaxing is all too often to plop down in front of the television set and let its pandering idiocy liquefy our brains."

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/05/20/bill-watterson-1990-kenyon-speech/

Great advice even if you aren't a writer.

Marketing is complicated. Eva makes it do-able.

 

 

Members and friends of the Fredericksburg Writers Conference spent most of last Saturday learning about marketing at the Shameless Self Promotion seminar.  Eva put this material into book form.  This is the latest on the concepts and processes she has learned in her trek over the last year from selling dozens a week to selling thousands a week.   It isn't easy, but it is do-able.  The alternatives are: 1 Don't sell many books or 2 Pay someone thousands of dollars to do this for you.

Available on Kindle for $3.99.

Shameless Self Promotion

Fredericksburg Writers Conference Workshop
No one noticed!  You have an awesome book or idea or business, and NO ONE KNOWS!  You're on Facebook, you've put an ad in the paper, you've sent an email to all your contacts, and you have 1 sale (your mother?)  If you have a book to promote or a business or an idea, but not a lot of money, this workshop is designed for you.

Dr. Eva Pohler has a day job as a professor of writing and English at the University of Texas in San Antonio, but she is also a wildly successful indie writer.  She didn't find this success by accident, but after a steep learning curve in generating publicity and readership for her Gatekeeper series of young adult novels.  Writing a great book is just the beginning; getting readers is a bigger challenge.

The Fredericksburg Writers Conference has heard presentations by Dr. Pohler twice in our year plus of existence, and it was clear that her strategies take much longer than an hour to lay out.  Because we found such value in her advice for self published writers, we have set up a workshop:

Saturday, June 28th, 2014.  Holy Ghost Lutheran Church Fellowship Hall (across from courthouse)

8:30 AM: Register/Coffee and Pastries/Introductions

 Creating Brand Awareness

 Using Social Media

 Soliciting Reviews

 Make Amazon Work for You

 Form Alliances/Box Lunch

 Format Your Book to Sell

1:30 PM:  Go home and get to work!

 

The fee is $60 including lunch.  This is our first attempt at a project like this, so we don't know what we are doing, but if anything, this is underpriced and it will be worth your time.

 

Robert Deming 830-992-5676 rcdeming@gmail.com

Mara Fox Moretti

Right Here! Three Summer Workshops for Writers

Fredericksburg Writers Conference Workshop

Dr. Eva Pohler has a day job as a professor of writing and English at the University of Texas in San Antonio, but she is also a wildly successful indie writer.  She didn't find this success by accident, but after a steep learning curve in generating publicity and readership for her Gatekeeper series of young adult novels.

The Fredericksburg Writers Conference has heard presentations by Dr. Pohler twice in our year plus of existence, and it was clear that her strategies take much longer than an hour to lay out.  Because we found such value in her advice for self published writers, we have set up a workshop:

Saturday, June 28th, 2014.  (location to be announced)

8:30 AM: Register/Coffee and Pastries/Introductions

 Creating Brand Awareness

 Using Social Media

 Soliciting Reviews

 Make Amazon Work for You

 Form Alliances/Box Lunch

 Format Your Book to Sell

1:30 PM:  Go home and get to work!

 

The fee is $60 including lunch. 

Texas Tech University Summer Workshops:
 

Reaching People Through Their Own Stories is set for 9 a.m.- 5 p.m., July 9 and 10. The workshop will provide attendees with a wealth of material—fiction, poetry, nonfiction, memoir—that is about a community both student and teacher actually live in, the issues and concerns that students see, talk, and wonder about.

How to Get Your Manuscript Published is set for 9 a.m. – 5 p.m., July 23 and 24. The workshop will provide attendees with the knowledge of how to write an author biography, query letter to an agent or publishing house and where to market your writing.
The presenter will be the delightful Christine Granados, author of six books, who was recently inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters.  These two-day sessions are $275 each and will earn CE credits.  Contact Christine Granados, christine.granados@ttu.edu or (830) 990-2717 for more info.

 

Story Ideas

Where do you get your story ideas from?  Here is one way:  the news.  You can't make this kind of stuff up.  What if the group of chimpanzees had gotten out of the zoo and into Kansas City?  A gang of chimps on the loose with a leader and the ability to climb; I can picture them at the counter of a diner eating eggs and hash browns.

 

What's your idea?

Bragging Rights

Members of the Fredericksburg Writers Conference have published:

Barbara Elmore  Breathing Room    1994
                           Crookwood    2000
                           Saviors of the Bugle   2003
                           Current project:  historical novel

Victoria Rust     The Feel of Silk   2010
                          The Unanticipated Heir   2010
                          Searching   2011

Kent Rylander   Behavior of Texas Birds 2002 U.T. Press

Barbara Lloyd   The Colours of Thailand   1997
                          The Colours of India    1989            
                          Reflections of Spain    1992
                          China: Travels Between the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers  2007

Mara Fox          I Shocked the Sheriff   2005
                          Letting Loose!   2007
                          Letting Go!    2009  
                          Shades of Desire   2014

Robert C Deming   Enchanted Rock Red  2010
                                Enchanted Rock Blue(s)  2012
                                Awol 21   2013
                              
Sally Clark   Where's My Hug?  2015 CandyCane Press